I improved my eyesight from left eye (-4.75) & right eye (-4.50) to 20/20. (At times they are 20/40 - the eyes do fluctuate but that is normal).
It did me a long take time. The first drop from L(-4.,75) & R(-4.5) to L(-3.,5) & R(-3.0) took two years mostly because I didn't understand what eyestrain really means, and because my work (as a programmer and project manager) require me to be in front of the computer for about 8 to 12 hours a day.
The second jump was more dramatic because I spent six months to research about the eyes and came up with a plan to tackle my nearsightedness. With the plan, I went from L(-3.,5) & R(-3.0) to - 0.75 in both eyes in three and one-half months. Then from -0.75 to 0 in about three months.
Dr. Bate is right that eyestrain cause refractive error, however It is difficult to understand what eye strain is and difficult to relax the eyes purely based on his writing and exercises alone. The subject needs farther explanation and the exercises refined and integrated. He has given us a diamond in the rough and we need to cut it to make it shine.
I tied the concept together to make it easy to understand and I created a five week lesson to develop the skills needed to use the eyes correctly based on his knowledge. I know how frustrating and discouraging it can be to improve your eyesight. I hope the knowledge and lessons will help make it easier for you to regain your eyesight.
You can read it: Stop Eyestrain Now! in the links below.
Best of luck to all - on your journey to clear vision,
Wynn
Reason: I think it's more marketing gimmick than anything else. On your page you have advertisements from a certain site I won't name due to obvious reasons.
You say: " however It is difficult to understand what eye strain is and difficult to relax the eyes purely based on his writing and exercises alone ", however purely based on your writing I can't help but think you're just rediscovering fire. If I compare your 'improved' explanation to Bates'... well perhaps I'm slow, but I would not neccesarily call it an improvement.
Again, I'm calling bullshit, but I'll give you a very small benefit of doubt, because granted I only skimmed through your e-book.
1. Advertising is a part of the internet business. It is just a way to help sustain a website while trying to help others.
2. Perhaps you are more intelligent than I and was able to grasp his message and exercise to improve your eyesight instantly. I had a lot of trouble understanding his explanation on eyestrain and found that it lacks detail. I found that his exercises also lack the details to help a beginner get started and to understand how to use it effectively. I may be wrong, but that is how I felt when I began learning Dr. Bates method. It did help me to improve my eyesight, but it took me a long time. Again, I may not be as smart as you are, and you have successfully used his method to regain your eyesight already.
I never wanted to write a ebook to improve eyesight, it just came out of my long struggle to improve my eyesight and the success I have gained from it. My explanation helped me to understand eyestrain from a different perspective, and the lessons helped me improved my eyesight. It may or it may not help you and others. I offer it free to anyone who is struggling to improve their eyesight and feel that they need a different perspective to help them improve. I think it is worth a try if you are struggling to improve your eyesight. If it helps then, I am glad to be of service. That is as far as my "gimmick" extends.
best regards,
Wynn
T Wrote:I'm calling bullshit first!
Reason: I think it's more marketing gimmick than anything else. On your page you have advertisements from a certain site I won't name due to obvious reasons.
You say: " however It is difficult to understand what eye strain is and difficult to relax the eyes purely based on his writing and exercises alone ", however purely based on your writing I can't help but think you're just rediscovering fire. If I compare your 'improved' explanation to Bates'... well perhaps I'm slow, but I would not neccesarily call it an improvement.
Again, I'm calling bullshit, but I'll give you a very small benefit of doubt, because granted I only skimmed through your e-book.
noneother Wrote:Wynn, what were the things you discovered that help you 'jump' in progress?
Dear noneother,
There are a number of things:
1.Realizing that our eyes are made to work best under certain condition - sunlight and distant vision. By practicing in those conditions, our eyes have the best chance to improve quickly.
2.Realizing that we are not learning to do an exercise, but rather learning the right skills to use our eyes correctly. I use to treat it as an exercise and never understood the importance of the learning the skills that the exercises are trying to teach me. Once I understood the difference, I practice the exercise to understand the skills, and use the skills for seeing every day.
3.Once I learn the skills, I do not practice the exercise anymore. I use the skills learned to look at everything. Exercise is not necessary anymore because I am always exercising when I use the right skills.
4.Change. I had to change the way I worked and used my eyes. I developed nearsightedness because I use my eyes incorrectly. I knew I can not improve by learning for ½ hour and then going back to doing the same routine that cause the nearsightedness. Change is hard, but it has to be done.
5.Habits. I saw that habits cause me to repeat the eyestrain. I had to develop new habits for using my eyes when I work and for handling stress. Stressful thoughts really do affect our eyesight.
6.Awareness. I had to learn to be aware of how I used my eyes all the time. I noticed that when I am not paying attention, my eyes go back to the same bad habit of seeing. When we are lost in our thoughts, our eyes goes on automatic mode and it follows muscle memory to see. With 20+ years of wrong muscle memory in my eyes, it always fall back on straining.
7.Persistence. We have to change our lifestyle. Everything we do that cause us to misuse our eyes has to be changed. That is why improving eyesight is so difficult. It is hard to change what you are familiar with.
It is a big challenge to improve eyesight, especially for me because I work long hours in front of a computer. It can be done because Dr. Bate is right that eyestrain cause refractive errors. It just takes a deep understanding of eyestrain in order remove it and improve our eyesight.
It can be done. If you are willing to make the changes and persist - you can be free of glasses.
I ask this because I read your book but with all due respect it's neglected a lot of core principles Dr Bates has written about.
Hi noneother,
That's not a problem.
First, habits are things that you do every day that needs to be changed. For example, if you are reading for hours without breaks in between, that is a bad habit of using your eyes. We all have bad habits. You need to replace them with good habits. In case above, change the habit by looking away at the end of each page or away every few minutes, and focus on a distant object. Look for the good habits in chapter thirteen.
The skills for using your eyes are learned in lessons one - five:
1. Remove strain from your eyes and know how it feels to relax the eye muscles - you do this by sunning, looking at distance objects or clouds, and palming. It uses Bates exercises in a way that allows the eyes to return to its relaxed position so you can feel what it means to relax your eye muscles.
2. Central fixation is learned by looking at a small area. It is the longest skills to master so it is started in lesson one. If you observe your how you look at something, you will notice that you look in wide mode (see more things at one glance) or narrow mode (focus on a small area for details). Central fixation is looking at a small area for sharp details.
3. Adjust to different distances. Nearsightedness cause our muscles to lock for near vision and it has trouble relaxing the muscles to look at different distances. In the lessons you practice focusing on objects at different distances. It will help you learn to overcome that locking and adjust to different distances smoothly. With practice, you can focus on different distances clearly.
4. Fusion is learning to use both eyes to converge on an area. This helps your eyes to sharpen an object you are looking at.
5. Paying attention is learned by being aware of your thoughts and not following them. This will help you relax the mind and remove mental strain.
6. Shifting is learned by keeping your eyes still, moving your head and allowing the eyes to work automatically learned in lesson five.
Improving your eyesight requires you to feel and sense your eye muscles, to be aware of tension, to feel what it means to let go of the tension, and to feel what it means to let your eyes work automatically. The essence of Dr. Bate's exercise is to help you recognize and feel these things. It take lots of time to practice, discipline to change, and awareness to master.
Hi Wynn,
I guess it must be like realizing your hidden potential and that the now is powerful since you have control over it.
It is just amazing to hear your story and I believe you so much, congratulations.
But, in the same time I would say that only a very few people has really the possibility to improve the vision like you did.
Well, I am just curious because I am quite interested in eyesight and such things.
Did you feel some improvement in the sense that you felt more relaxed in your eyes when waking up in the morning ?
Do you think it is beneficial to both be aware of the peripheral and the central vision at the same time ?
Do you think it is possible to improve the eyesight with lenses on ?
The reason why I ask the last question is because I also sit very much in front of the computer and have actually not the possibility to remove the lenses because then I cannot see the computer screen of my collegue.
I also just wanted to say that my goal is absolutely not to get normal sight.
My goal is to get relaxed and enjoy the life here in more harmony and meditative way,
and I think this is only possible if you apply the Bates principles, because it is actually a method to relax oneself.
I also agree with you that you don't want to do exercises in the long run, because you want to learn how to see automatically and then the exercises is unnecessary when you have understood how it feels when the eyes are relaxed.
So the goal is not to exercise, the goal is to get awareness of how you feel and people don't have time to be aware of to learn how they should feel, and also the awareness is relative so to understand how to get true awareness is an iterative approach where you must relate things to a whole context in order to improve the details of it.
I think it is good that you spread some more meditative awareness out there to people, because the world needs more love spread out all over the place.
Wynn, I do not agree on your practise because I've been down those paths and it didn't lead to results. However, if it did benefit you then good for you and congrats.
It's important for people not to be lead astray in their practise and think it's always best to go back to Bate's original materials.
@noneother: You said that you won't be replying here anymore, but I just wanted to share my opinion on what you just posted. Hopefully, you'll read it (and PM me if you want to let me know what you think).
I can't honestly say whether wynn's ideas are right or not, but like you said, the important thing is that it worked for him. I disagree with your saying that he is leading people "astray". If I recall correctly, what works for someone may not necessarily work for another, but that is not to say that it WON'T work for anyone else. His path might not work for you, but might work for someone else. I think that it's important to share all the viewpoints in regards to the Bates method. Are there some that will work for almost nobody? Sure. But that doesn't mean that we simply say that people shouldn't try it out because it didn't work for us. What would you say if an optometrist went up to you and said that the Bates method doesn't work because he tried it before and failed? I feel that these forums are a nice place to share our opinions (and laugh at the comments of spammers; seriously, their posts can be pretty funny) and at the end, it's up for the individual to make up his own mind which path he has to take.
Hi Hammer,
Thank you for your comment. It is good to know that some people do understand my message.
I think others can improve their eyesight by learning the skills in the lessons. How much improvement will depend on how well they master the skills and incorporate them into their daily life. I am the most undisciplined person when it comes to repetitive exercises, and if I can do it, there is a very good chance that others can do it.
>> Did you feel some improvement in the sense that you felt more relaxed in your eyes when waking up in the morning?
The difference now and before is like night and day. When I first started, I eyes felt tight and tired every morning no matter how many hours of sleep I get each night. If I only get 4 hours of sleep, I can't even open them in the morning. Now, my eyes are not tired even if I only have 4 hours of sleep or needing to stay up the whole night. The eyes feel as if it has been holding weights for decades and I have finally let it go.
>> Do you think it is beneficial to both be aware of the peripheral and the central vision at the same time ?
As a myopic, I notice that I use peripheral vision for everything. I was always looking at too big of an area. It was central vision that I needed to learn to use correctly again. Both are important for good vision because we use peripheral for getting a good sense of an area and central for seeing details. We need to use each one for the right purpose.
>> Do you think it is possible to improve the eyesight with lenses on ?
I know how difficult it is to work in front of a computer without your glasses. I use to park my face 7-8 inches from the monitor to see the programs I was writing.
Yes, you can improve even if you need to use lenses. It will just take a little longer because your eyes are accommodating the lenses rather than to its natural focusing ability. The important thing is to use the lessons to bring your eyes back to its rest position and realize what it feels like and how to consciously bring it back to that position. When you can feel and understand it, then the lenses will only temporarily strain your eyes. Once you can see farther, then you can try working without your lenses.
Improving our eyesight really does require us to be aware of our body and mind so that we can interrupt the eyestrain that repeatedly appear from our habits and mental stress. When we learn that skill, it will help improve your eyesight, and many other areas of your life.
Please try out the lessons, the steps are simple to do but it help you to develop the right skills. Once you learn the skills, then use it everyday to look at things and you will see results. If something doesn't make sense in the lesson, please do let me know, so I can re-word it to make it clearer.
I hope others will read and try out the lessons to see if they can improve their eyesight before concluding that it was not for them. We are all here because we want to find a way to improve our eyesight and help others with their struggle. I know how difficult it is to succeed when the whole eye care industry say it is impossible and the information is not detailed enough to help us succeed.
Try practicing the lessons for five weeks and see what happens. If it works then continue and use it to improve. If it does not, then take what you can from the lessons, and put together something better that will work for you. You have nothing to lose and experience to gain.
@wynn: There's no need to thank me. I'm not necessarily defending you either. I just think that people need to be allowed to see what reasonable options are out there. We all want to help, and I guess the problem is that there are different ways to reach that goal. Clearly, noneother has been down the path you've illustrated and it didn't work for him, and there's nothing wrong with him saying so (if he had detailed his own path, you might very well think that his path wouldn't work for you). Maybe I'm a bit too touchy, but I just felt that a line was crossed a bit by saying that it won't work for everyone.
